The heart of the American business dream

By Vasudev Ram

UPDATE: Added links below to two interview series of Greg; both are good startup reading.

I saw this recently. The article is by Greg Gianforte, founder of RightNow Technologies. I had read a very interesting interview series about him and RightNow on Sramana Mitra's blog some time earlier. Here is the article (not the interview series, see below for that).

Bootstrapping: The Secret to Entrepreneurial Success

The key quote from it - which is also the title of this blog post - is:

"And that commitment to achieving success by delivering value is really at the heart of the American business dream."

By "the American business dream", of course, I guess Greg means the American Dream

Here are two interview series of Greg and an about page for him:

1: Here are the links to those articles about Greg Gianforte and his company RightNow Technologies on Sramana Mitra's site:

Part 1:

The Montana Mogul: RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte (Part 1)

There are more parts to the article; the links to them are at the bottom of each article page.

2: About Greg

3: Greg's Rules for Bootstrappers (entrepreneurs starting without any or much funding):

This also has more parts, links at end of each page.

I found both series interesting. The point that stood out for me the most, was the one about asking potential customers whether they will buy your product, before writing even a line of code, asking them why not (if they say no), learning from what they say and modifying your product plans based on that, repeating all that with many customers, and only starting to build your product after it has evolved in your mind and been shaped by these interactions. Greg's point is that by doing this, you are much more likely to get paying customers and revenue, soon.


- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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